The vase in the decorative arts.(Current and Coming)

In recent years the study of the decorative arts, particularly glass, ceramics, and metalwork, has benefited enormously from archaeological excavations carried out on land and beneath the ocean floor. Yet, for the most part, the resulting artifacts are of interest only to a relatively small number of professionals in the field. A much larger wave was made when two great archaeological digs of the eighteenth century uncovered the ancient Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii in 1738 and 1748, respectively. These finds had an enormous impact and considerably amplified the vocabulary of ornament that designers and craftsmen used to embellish luxury objects of all kinds. One of the most ubiquitous motifs found on objects made during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is the vase. At first the various vase forms made in ancient times were copied by European craftsmen, but then classical vases became a point of departure for the creation of something new. An exhibition that traces the evolution of the vase in the decorative arts of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is the subject of an exhibition on view at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture in New York City through October 17. It is entitled Vasemania--Neoclassical Form and Ornament: Selections from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The show includes some one hundred objects, and is the outgrowth of a collaboration between a group of graduate students under the leadership of Stefanie Walker, a professor and curator at Bard, and William Rieder of the department of European sculpture and decorative arts at the Metropolitan Museum.

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The ceramics, metalwork, furniture, textiles, and works on paper in the show are mostly drawn from the storage rooms of the museum, and therefore are not often seen by the public. Almost all the objects were made in France and England and are either functional, like vase-shaped inkwells or perfume burners, or they incorporate vases in their decoration.

Collectors and antiquarians were largely responsible for the vogue for collecting antiquities that took root in the eighteenth century. Among them were Sir William Hamilton in England; Anne Claude Philippe, comte de Caylus, in France; Giovanni Battista Piranesi in Italy; and Johann Joachim Winckelmann in Germany. Vases were the most highly sought after of all the antiquities then available. The exhibition examines the important role the Hamilton collection played in the rise of the neoclassical style. Hamilton served as British envoy extraordinary and ...